Abijam
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Abijah (Hebrew:אביים Aviyam: "father of the sea" or "my father is the sea" or "my father is the god Yah") was the fourth king of the House of David and the second of the Kingdom of Judah. He was the son of Rehoboam, the grandson of Solomon and the great-grandson of David. The Chronicler refers to him as "Abijah (Hebrew:אביה, "my father is The LORD"). William F. Albright has dated his reign to 915 BC-913 BC, while E. R. Thiele offers the dates 913 BC-911 BC. The Hebrew Bible gives his reign length as three years. His mother's name was Maacah, or Micaiah, the granddaughter of the infamous Abishalom (Absalom). Abijah married fourteen wives, and had 22 sons and 16 daughters.¹

War Against Jeroboam I

Abijah seems to have gone to considerable lengths to bring the fledgling Kingdom of Israel back under his control. He waged a major battle against the northern king in the Mountains of Ephraim; the sizes of the two armies are given by II Chronicles as being 400 000 and 800 000 respectively.² Abijah addressed the armies of Israel, telling them to return to his control, but his plea fell on deaf ears. Abijah's elite warriors fended off a pincer movement to rout Jeroboam I, killing 500,000 of his troops.³

Jeroboam I was crippled by this severe defeat at the hands of his southern rival, and was not much of a threat to the Kingdom of Judah for the rest of his reign.⁴

Succession

A more complete biography than that of the Hebrew Bible of Abijah was written by Iddo the Seer, but it is no longer extant. Abijah was buried beside his ancestors in Jerusalem. He was succeeded by Asa.

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.